


The Prince and the Roman

by Grac3



Series: Loki and the Doctor [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre-Thor (2011), Sparring, Spoilers for Episode: s07e03 The Power of Three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 02:18:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10065962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grac3/pseuds/Grac3
Summary: A few months before Thor's coronation, Loki is in the fields of Asgard when a smoking TARDIS crash lands nearby. Inside is a Doctor that he recognises, and a married couple just trying to celebrate their anniversary.





	

He couldn't believe how fast it had all snuck up on them. Thor's coronation was only a few months away, and preparations were already being made on a massive scale. Decorations were being made and invitations were being sent, and there was meeting after meeting after meeting to decide just how the day could go off best for everyone – well, how it could go off best for Thor.

The meetings were long and boring and Loki wanted nothing to do with them; he wanted to shut himself away somewhere where he wouldn't have to choose between two different shades of gold for the banners that were to be hung in the throne room, or which scribe had the curliest handwriting that could be used on the invitations…

He was at one of these meetings when it happened.

Or, at least, he was supposed to be.

It hadn't been very long since the second prince of Asgard had worked out that his presence – while desired and expected – wasn't strictly necessary at every single meeting regarding the preparations of his brother's big day; after all, he doubted very much that the decision to seat Gunhild and Bodil on opposite sides of the reception hall needed princely approval. There were indeed some of the infernal meetings at which he had to make an appearance – the ones where the royal tailor was consulting him about his own desired finery for the ceremony, for example – but, at many others, he had realised rather quickly that he could get away with not turning up.

He had spent his newly created free time doing much more important things. A mere few days after the date for the coronation had been officially announced and the arduous preparations had begun, he had found, in the very depths of the library that was filled with tomes so dusty that he had suspicions that they must have been forgotten about for centuries, a book on teleportation. It was an incredibly advanced and difficult branch of magic that he had never been able to properly study before, but as soon as he pulled the large, leather-bound book from the bookshelf, he had turned his full attention to it.

He had started off small, as sorcerers did with any unfamiliar branch of magic that they had never explored before. He began by simply transporting from one side of the room to the other and back again, the rooms getting larger and larger the more comfortable he felt with the development of his skill. When he felt confident enough, he began going larger distances, such as from his room to the dining hall in less than a second.

Once he had perfected alarming the other diners at breakfast too many times for Volstagg jumping so violently out of his seat that the contents of his oversized plate of food were scattered all over the table to be funny anymore, he had worked on going further and further and further. (Sif hadn't been pleased when he had stolen her spear and taken it all the way to the top of the tallest hill in the city and refused to get it down for her again, forcing the maiden to spend an entire day trekking up there to retrieve it; Thor had made it abundantly clear that the prince was lucky he hadn't been run through with it once it had been reunited with its rightful owner.)

Before long, he had begun to work on transportation to other Realms, without the use of the Bifrost and without Heimdall knowing about it. It wouldn't be easy, he knew, but that's just how many of those meetings there were.

He had succeeded on more than one occasion: hopping from this Realm to another, with only a few difficulties here and there (there had been the water landing, which wasn't exactly enjoyable, but he'd been near enough to the shore that it wasn't too much of a problem). And the Gatekeeper had been eyeing him rather suspiciously since he had begun bypassing the Bifrost, which the trickster took to mean that he had succeeded in avoiding his Sight.

By comparison, he was barely doing anything mischievous on the day that it happened. He was merely sitting in a field far enough away from the palace that he could argue it was too much of a journey to go back to attend one of the meetings (for he had neglected to tell anyone of his latest talent) with a few books at his side, a couple of trustworthy daggers in his pockets – which, since he had been given them as a present from his parents, he never went anywhere without – and the sun beating down pleasantly on his back.

It was one of those days which suited the prince best: it was not too hot that he would begin to feel ill, as he often did when the sun became too harsh, for reasons that none of the healers in the palace could quite deduce, and he had no other company but himself.

That was, until it happened.

It began as a hushed _whoosh_ some distance off behind him, so insignificant that he dismissed it as a particularly determined gust of wind. He only began to question it when it became apparent that the noise wasn't going to end: and, not only that, but it was growing steadily louder with each passing second.

Loki put down the book that he was reading, and slowly turned towards the noise. There was nothing immediately behind him, so he turned his gaze to the heavens, and was suddenly aware of just what the commotion was.

Something, very far off in the sky, was headed towards the ground at an incredibly fast pace. There seemed to be no control over it as it hurtled toward the ground, and the prince would have thought that it was an asteroid of some sort had it not been for the fact that, as it drew ever closer, he began to recognise its shape and markings.

The TARDIS crash landed in the field in which Loki was sitting – mercifully upright – a mere thirty feet or so from the prince and his books. Smoke was billowing from the top of the box, thick and black, as though the wood from which it was made was on fire.

The door was thrown open, and Loki tensed slightly in anticipation to see which face the Doctor would be wearing this time. Yet he couldn't see inside the ship just yet, for the doorway was filled with smoke just as the air above the ship was. It was a few seconds before a shadow appeared within it, and three coughing people exited the TARDIS in quick succession.

The first was a tall maiden with long hair that was redder than any other that Loki had ever seen; she was followed by a man about the same height as her, who had a slightly beaked nose and sorrowful, green eyes; and finally, a face that Loki had met before: the lanky Doctor who had visited him as a child.

The Doctor was wearing different clothes, however; whereas before (for Loki) he had been wearing dark colours and long garments, this Doctor was bright in greens and beiges and red braces reaching from the tops of his trousers and over his shoulders.

All of them had their hands covering their faces and were hacking out whatever substance was burning inside the TARDIS that might have got into their lungs. There were black patches all over their clothes and parts of their exposed skin, and their hair was sticking up in odd places, ruffled by whatever catastrophe had occurred inside the ship.

Loki wasn't surprised when the Doctor was the first of the three of them to recover. He made a rather flamboyant show of straightening himself up again, running his hands over his hair to fix it as best he could, and pulling at his braces. Loki swivelled around on the grass to watch what was going on before him.

The Time Lord turned to the other passengers of his ship with an awkward smile; Loki wasn't sure if it was meant to reassure his two companions, or himself.

"Well, that was-" he began, but he was cut off.

"Horrible," the other man said forcefully, before coughing twice more. "'Let's fly under the belly of this ship,' he said! 'They won't fire at us'!" The second man rounded on the Time Lord with fury, his hands balling into fists at his side as he took steps towards the Doctor, who backed away swiftly and cowered, almost holding his hands up in defence.

Loki could tell why the Doctor would be intimidated by the man. Ordinary and Midgardian as he looked – and he probably was, for the Doctor had told him that most of his companions came from that Realm – Loki could see, even from this distance, that his man was not one to be trifled with: he was a warrior, and a fearsome one at that. He had probably seen the horrors of war and taken many lives, all in the service of some greater victory.

The prince found himself wondering what could have inspired the Doctor to take someone like that travelling with him.

The redheaded maiden, now recovered herself from the smoke inhalation, walked up behind the tensed warrior and placed her hands on his shoulders. The warrior turned around and, upon seeing her face, visibly relaxed; a smile even touched at the corners of his mouth.

Now seeing that the danger was averted, the Doctor straightened himself up again and tweaked at the bow that he wore at his throat, that had ended up skew-whiff at some point on their adventure, and began to look around, clapping his hands and rubbing them together.

"Right," he declared, "let's see where we are." He took off in the direction that led him away from the TARDIS and towards the prince who had yet to be noticed, his long legs moving slowly as his feet twisted and turned on the grass.

He looked to his left and to his right, seeing nothing but the field in which they had landed; and then, he looked straight ahead, and his eyes fell on the figure sitting on the ground.

"Loki!" he grinned, striding towards the prince with purpose. The warrior and the redhead looked over at the sudden exclamation from the Time Lord, interrupted from the brief conversation that they had been having.

Now that he was an active participant in the conversation rather than just an eavesdropper, Loki pushed himself to his feet as the Time Lord approached. He opened his mouth to offer the Doctor a greeting, but before he could, the Time Lord opened his arms wide and strode purposefully towards him; Loki's eyes widened in horror as he got ever closer, but he didn't have enough time to stop the hug before it happened. All of the prince's muscles stiffened at once as the Doctor's arms wrapped around him tightly. He looked over the Time Lord's shoulder at the couple who were now making their way over, begging with his eyes to be released from this strange prison.

They had not yet reached the Doctor and Loki, however, when the Time Lord finally released him, slapping him on the shoulders and beaming.

"How have you been?" he asked, continuing without giving the prince chance to answer. "I haven't seen you since…"

The Doctor trailed off, the smile on his face faltering and an emotion that passed too quickly for Loki to identify flickering through his eyes. The Time Lord cleared his throat awkwardly, lowering his arms to his sides.

"Yes… well… it's good to see you! When is this?" The Doctor reached up to Loki's hair, running the ends of the long, dark locks through his fingers before pulling away. "I'd say… sometime around Thor's coronation?"

Rather awed by the fact that the Time Lord could date this moment in his personal timeline with such accuracy just by the evidence provided to him by his hair, Loki offered him an impressed smile. "A mere few months away," he explained, with a slight inclination of his head.

By this point, the other two passengers on the TARDIS had caught up with them. The maiden took one look at Loki and let in a sharp inhale through pursed lips, leaning on the warrior's shoulder with one elbow and crossing her legs at the ankles.

"Who is this?" she asked eagerly, lasciviousness flashing through her eyes: a look that sent a shiver of fear down into Loki's very core.

"He's not your husband," the warrior answered bitterly on the prince's behalf, and Loki now understood their relationship with one another.

The maiden pouted, straightening herself up so that she was no longer leaning on the warrior. She held out her hand for Loki to shake.

"I'm Amy," she explained, as Loki slowly – rather nervously – took the offered hand and gave it a brief shake.

"Loki," he supplied, drawing his hand back as the warrior offered his own.

"Rory," the warrior explained. "It's our anniversary," he added, gesturing to Amy as the two of them pulled away from the hand shake. Amy's gaze was still fixed on the prince.

"'Loki'?" she asked. "As in, Norse mythology? Brother of Thor?"

Loki didn't quite know what she meant by 'Norse mythology', but he was well aware that tales of Asgard and its people had become legends on Midgard, and – based on the second question that she posed to him – he reasoned that it was safe to infer that she had the right idea.

He let out a small, breathy chuckle laced with false humility and held out his hands. "They very same."

Amy's grin widened as a quick look of worry shot through Rory's eyes. Loki lowered his hands, knowing that there was something very dangerous going on, and he didn't wish to incur the warrior's wrath.

Instead, he turned to address the Doctor.

"What happened?" he asked, gesturing to the TARDIS with an inclination of his head. The ship was still smoking, the black plumes billowing from both the top and out of the door of the blue box.

The Doctor hissed, wringing his hands together as he rocked on the balls of his feet. "We ran into a bit of trouble with a Cyber ship. Tried to go underneath it, but they saw us anyway. Kind of started firing at us." The Time Lord paused at the confused look on the prince's face. "You don't… know Cyber ships… do you?" the Doctor asked slowly.

"I fear it is a gap in my knowledge," Loki replied smoothly.

The Doctor clapped a hand on his shoulder and grinned. "Nothing for you to worry about. It was nowhere near Asgard. Uh… we are on Asgard, aren't we?"

"We are," the prince confirmed, as the Doctor lowered his hand from his shoulder. A grin broke out on the Time Lord's face.

"Excellent!" he exclaimed. "All this magic in the soil; the TARDIS will soak it all up, be right as rain in a few hours."

"Hang on, _magic_?" Rory asked, looking between the Doctor and Loki.

"Yes, magic," the Doctor repeated. "It's quite common here on Asgard: it's the same thing as science to the Æsir."

Rory blinked in surprise, but didn't query the Doctor anymore.

"Well, it looks like we're gonna be here for a while," Amy smiled, looking back over at Loki from Rory. The prince found the expression on her face rather uncomfortable, though he refused to let it show on his face.

Nevertheless, the Doctor seemed to notice his disquiet, for he wrapped an arm around the prince's shoulders. "It does indeed," he agreed with the redhead. "Care to join us in the wait?" he added, turning his head to face Loki.

"Of course," he smiled back at the Time Lord, trying his best to ignore the victorious look that crossed Amy's face at his acceptance.

"Brilliant! Why don't the two of you go back to the TARDIS and wait. I've got some catching up to do with my friend."

Rory shot the Doctor a grateful look before the couple turned to head back towards the still-smoking ship. The Doctor took back his arm and began to follow his companions, though he set the pace considerably slower.

"'Catch up'?" Loki repeated, slightly wary. The Doctor – in his future – had warned him against telling the Doctor anything that could indicate what the future was for the Time Lord; so how could they 'catch up'? "I have not yet met you so many times that we would be able to do such a thing."

"Yes, I think I'm beginning to piece together the order in which you meet me," the Doctor explained. "The last time was the episode in the library, yes? With the Weeping Angel?"

"That is correct," Loki nodded. Up ahead, Amy and Rory had reached the TARDIS and were taking up seats on the grass some ten feet to the left of the smoking ship.

"Are you still avoiding warrior training?" the Time Lord asked, inspiring a breathy laugh from the prince.

"Admittedly, I miss the occasional session, yes. Though since the… incident in the library, I have seen the error of my ways and the importance of training." A strange look shot through the Doctor's eyes at that sentence: almost relief mixed with guilt. "But that was not my intention in coming out here today."

"So why are you out here?" the Doctor asked.

"Thor's coronation looms. It requires a great deal of planning. Such preparations are… tedious, to say the least."

The Doctor let out a sharp bark of laughter. "Yeah, I would hide from that too."

They lapsed into silence as they walked, still slowly, until they reached Amy and Rory and the healing TARDIS. Yet for all the quietness between them, Loki's mind was screaming louder than the howls of a roaring Bilgesnipe.

The Doctor, he knew, had met him so many more times than he had met the Time Lord. He knew his future, and what it held, and that was suddenly an incredibly tantalising prospect. The last time that he had met the Doctor, he had been so focused on his present – his here and now, as adolescents were wont to do – but now…

With the coronation a mere few months away – barely the blink of an eye to one who lived as long as an Asgardian; or, he supposed, a Time Lord – he suddenly found himself aware that he really had no idea what was in store for him throughout the rest of his life. Thor's path had all but been paved before him: he would be crowned heir to the throne of Asgard and then, one day, he would take his rightful place as king and rule for the rest of his days.

Loki's future seemed rather murkier than that, shrouded in the shadows in which he so often liked to hide away.

Yet the man next to him knew what lay ahead for him – he had seen it; he had _lived_ it. To have such foreknowledge of his own destiny so close, so easily accessible…

He had barely opened to his mouth to request the secrets of his future, when he was cut off with the sharp twang of Amy's foreign accent.

"So how do you two know each other?" she asked conversationally. "'Cause I'm guessing you do know each other; being all chummy and whatever."

Without the prince realising, he and the Doctor had reached the couple as they sat on the grass. By this point, Amy was lounging back on her elbows, one of her legs bent at the knee so that her foot was resting against the side of her other calf. Next to her, Rory was sitting cross-legged with his hands in his lap. Loki's question died on his lips as the Doctor walked around him to flop down on Amy's other side. He lay on his side facing the redhead, propped up on one elbow but still lower down than the maiden was.

"Oh, we go way back," the Doctor explained. "But we keep meeting out of order," he added, looking over at Loki.

"What, like River?" Rory asked, looking from the Doctor to Loki as the prince took a seat on the ground next to him, his back perfectly straight and his legs stretched out before him. The name sounded familiar, and Loki remembered seeing her face in the pictures that he had seen as a child; he had had no idea that she suffered from the same confusing set up as he.

"Like River," the Doctor confirmed. "Do you know River?" he asked the prince, pushing himself further up on his elbow so that he could look over Amy and across to where Loki was standing.

"I have not met her," he replied.

"Oh, I'll have to do something about that," the Doctor grinned.

"You think we will be partial to one another?"

The Doctor laughed. "Oh, she'll eat you for breakfast. She eats _me_ for breakfast…" His eyes suddenly glazed over, as though he was stuck in a memory of this River woman.

"I doubt a maiden could do such a thing to me," Loki scoffed rather arrogantly; he purposefully left out that Sif had managed to throw him to the floor just the other week and hold him there until he submitted.

"River could," Rory mumbled, staring straight ahead of him, obviously caught in the same introspective trance as the Doctor.

Their insistence that he could be bested by this maiden began to grate on his nerves; they had no idea that this River could defeat him in hand-to-hand combat – or any other kind of combat, for that matter – with any real certainty. Maybe she could, for even he could admit that he was not infallible, but without actually meeting her…

"Could _you_?" he asked Rory, tilting his head in inquiry and biting the words out.

Rory blinked in surprise, obviously caught unawares by the question. His brow furrowed in surprise and confusion as he turned to face the prince.

"Could I… what?" he asked, rather dumbly.

Loki let out a breathy chuckle, the mischievous grin that he had somehow perfected somehow along the road of his life without being conscious that he had been working on the skill stretching on his lips.

"Could you defeat me?" he clarified. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Doctor's expression darken, though Amy sat up a little straighter, her interest piqued.

"Uh…" Rory stammered, but his indistinct noise was cut short by the redhead next to him speaking up.

"Yeah; he could," Amy insisted, defiance written on her face.

Beside her, the Doctor looked wary; Loki could see that the Doctor did not approve of what was happening, but he nevertheless did not voice his opinions on the matter.

Reluctance shone in Rory's eyes as his head snapped from side to side, looking from Amy to Loki and back again as though each time he looked back at one of them, they would have changed their minds.

The seconds grew longer and Loki was getting impatient. When Rory looked back over at him again, he did not remain silent.

"You are a warrior, are you not?"

"He's the Last Centurion," Amy answered for him; Rory turned to shoot her a quick glare, but he seemed to realise that there was no point in trying to resist any further.

"Fine," he sighed, pushing himself to his feet. Loki followed suit, readying himself for the challenge, but Rory began heading back to the TARDIS.

"Turn the extractor fans on!" the Doctor called over to him as he disappeared through the doors.

"Where is he going?" Loki asked, looking down at the Doctor and Amy as they reclined on the grass.

"To get his sword," Amy answered, a smirk playing on her lips.

A moment after Rory stepped into the TARDIS, the smoke swirling through the doors seemed to be sucked inwards with a loud _whooshing_ sound, and the view inside was cleared for the prince to see inside.

The ship looked completely different than the last time that Loki had been inside. The first room was smaller, with no grand staircase and no plushy chairs surrounded by tables piled high with books. The staircase was transparent and seemed to be made of glass, as did the floor surrounding the strange panel in the centre of the room. Everything had a brightness to it as well: the room was filled with oranges and reds and yellows, when before all had been dark and stony.

Such a redecoration, Loki thought, must have taken an age to do on a ship that was truly infinite – but, then again, the prince supposed, if its owner could change his face, then why shouldn't the TARDIS be able to do something similar?

A few minutes later, Rory appeared at the top of the staircase at the far side of the first room of the TARDIS with a sword in his hand. It appeared to be incredibly old, though extremely well looked after. It was certainly an impressive weapon – for one that hailed from Midgard.

Shoving the memory of what happened the last time that Loki was in the same vicinity of the Doctor and a sword back into the depths of his mind, the prince grinned and stepped further back into the clearing of the field, well away from their spectators. The warrior followed him, idly swirling the sword in his hand.

"This isn't to the death or anything, is it?" he asked, a hint of nervousness entering his voice.

"No, of course not. Sparring is not the place for death."

Rory visibly relaxed, and adopted a – slightly – more threatening position: he turned so that he was facing Loki from the side, his sword angled towards him and his free hand raised to keep his balance.

In a curtesy that, it would seem, did not extend to Midgard, Loki bowed low, looking up from his lowered position to see a flash of confusion cross the warrior's face. Rory merely offered a brief nod as Loki straightened up again, one of his slender hands already reaching in the inside pocket of his outer-garment for one of his daggers.

Deftly, he flicked the dagger towards Rory as soon as he had a secure grip around its hilt. Rory's eyes widened in surprise, but he swung his sword in a graceful arc before him: the sharp _clang_ of metal striking metal rang through the air as the dagger was deflected, thrown off to the side and heading for the grass. Loki outstretched his hand and called it back with his magic; it flew through the air and back into his waiting hand.

Rory's brow furrowed as his gaze flicked to the returned dagger.

"Science and magic. Huh."

Yet he was not fascinated for long; he suddenly surged forward, his sword aiming for Loki's side. The prince jumped out of the way, half-skipping to the side as he switched hands with his dagger and brought it round, slicing a slit in the side of Rory's sleeve.

The warrior glanced down at the hole in his shirt, a dark look crossing his face as he looked back up at Loki.

"My mum got me this shirt," he sighed, and it seemed that that was the incentive he needed to fight back properly.

The warrior suddenly sparred in earnest, jabbing at Loki with speed and agility so advanced that the prince had to adopt an odd sort of dance to avoid the blows of the sharp steel. Once or twice he managed to catch the blade with his dagger, and a few of his minor blasts of magic caught the warrior's torso so that he gasped or snarled at the irritation that it caused him, but the constant moving around was quickly boring Loki – so he decided to make it more interesting.

Loki skipped to the side, circling around Rory so that – for half a second – he was in the warrior's blind spot; and half a second was all he needed.

While Rory wasn't entirely sure exactly where the trickster was, Loki multiplied himself, surrounding Rory with a circle of copies of himself, all standing in the same position and with the same mischievous smile on their faces.

Rory's eyes widened almost imperceptibly as he looked all around himself at the copies of Loki that surrounded him. He took each one in with a careful and analytical eye, as he turned to look at them all. Loki waited until he was once again in the warrior's blind spot to strike…

But he never got the chance.

Suddenly, Rory swivelled back to face the real Loki, and brought his sword up, twisting it as he brought it down so that the end of the hilt whacked painfully into the prince's shoulder. The illusions faded away as Loki lost his balance, tripping over his own feet and falling, his back slamming into the ground.

Rory stood over him, the tip of his sword merely an inch above his throat.

Losing was not an unfamiliar concept to Loki, but this loss was different; Rory's reaction in his own victory was nothing like anything that the prince had ever experienced before. He was not whooping for joy or declaring himself to be akin to the greatest warrior in all of Asgard – or, a la Thor, to be better than the greatest warrior in all of Asgard.

Rather, there was a sadness in his eyes that made him look much older than he surely was: a sadness that reminded Loki of the Doctor.

Yet he was not afforded the time to ponder on that, for a loud whoop rose up from somewhere off to his right. Amy had pushed herself up into a sitting position and was applauding her husband. Beside her, the Doctor merely looked uncomfortable.

"Well done, stupid face!" Amy called, a grin plastered on her lips.

Loki's gaze flicked back up to Rory from his position on the grass, his brow raising in an enquiring quirk.

Rory sighed. "It's… nothing," he mumbled, removing his sword from Loki's throat and offering his free hand to help the prince to his feet.

When he was upright once more, Loki sent a shiver of magic down his entire body, ridding his hair and clothes of any creases or grass stains that they may have acquired.

"Well done, indeed," he offered, bowing slightly once more. "You are truly an amiable warrior."

"Yeah…" Rory drawled sadly, looking off at the ground to Loki's right and never meeting the prince's eyes.

As they turned back to walk back over to where the TARDIS was sitting, the Doctor and Amy were already deep in some conversation that had them both smiling. Loki was glad for that: he wished to speak with this Centurion.

"You do not sound proud of your achievements?" Loki prompted as they wandered to a spot on the other side of the TARDIS to the Doctor and Amy and sat down on the grass. Rory lay his sword down at his side.

His melancholy in the face of victory perplexed Loki immensely. Granted, he knew nothing of the customs of fighting on Midgard, but on Asgard, winning a spar such as that was to be celebrated; surely the feeling of elation that accompanied a triumph was universal?

"Is it really an achievement?" Rory asked, turning to Loki with a sceptical look on his face.

Loki blinked, not quite sure how to process this. He chuckled lightly, confused.

"You saw through my illusions, were able to discern the real from the fake. Very few can do that." A nostalgic smile touched Loki's lips as he remembered all the times that he had fooled Thor with is illusions and doppelgangers. Loki doubted that he was ever not going to fall for it.

"Well, it takes one to know one," Rory muttered, and – in an instant – that look was back: that awful look in his eyes that spoke of untold horror and misery.

"I do not follow your meaning," Loki confessed, urging Rory to explain.

"It's… a long story."

"The Doctor said that it would be a few hours before the TARDIS would be able to move on; I believe we can afford to spend some of the wait in storytelling."

Rory let in a deep breath, closing his eyes briefly as though preparing to recant his story.

"Before we were married – Amy and I," he began, still looking at the grass before him rather than at Loki, "something… happened. Something… weird and complicated. Amy was locked in this box called the Pandorica. It was the perfect prison; there was no way to escape, you couldn't even die in it."

Loki sat silently as he listened to Rory's story, though he couldn't help but be impressed at the so-called Pandorica. There were many prisons on Asgard, built for the detainment of the worst creatures and monsters that had ever threatened the safety of the Realm, but they all had one flaw that, it would seem, the Pandorica lacked. For there was no prison on Asgard from which not even death could afford escape.

The Pandorica would be the perfect place for Frost Giants…

"The Doctor had to go forward in time two thousand years, but he couldn't take the Pandorica with him. I didn't want to leave Amy for all that time, so I stayed with her until the Doctor showed up again."

Loki couldn't quite reign in his surprise at that statement; he blinked and raised his eyebrows.

"Two thousand years?" he asked.

Rory nodded, finally looking back up at Loki. The prince searched his eyes for any sign of a lie – and he was probably the most adept out of everyone on Asgard at detecting falsehoods – but he found none.

Rory really had waited outside a truly awesome prison for two thousand years for the woman he loved.

"How did you survive for so long?"

Rory chuckled slightly, though there was no humour in the action.

"Well, that's the thing. I wasn't human at the time. I was… plastic."

"Plastic?" Loki parroted, ignorant of what that was.

"Yeah, it's… do you have plastic here?"

"I am afraid we do not."

"It doesn't matter," Rory shrugged. "But basically I wasn't human. I was a fake."

Loki offered a nod in understanding, still baffled by the two thousand years. That was older than _he_ was, and yet the man beside him was a mortal – a Midgardian. Not even the Doctor, when he had visited him as a child in his older form, had yet reached two thousand, and Rory had exceeded even the Time Lord.

"You must have seen wondrous things," the prince murmured softly. Rory agreed with a slow nod, his eyes glazing over slightly as he cast his mind back to that time.

"I watched one of the greatest empires in human history crumble. I saw kings deposed and rulers fall from grace. They all deserved it, really. All arrogant and war-loving."

A jolt ran through Loki as he realised that Rory cold have been describing his brother.

… _kings deposed and rulers fall from grace_.

"They were not fit to rule?" Loki asked, an intense unease rising within him.

"No, they weren't," Rory shook his head.

Loki turned away from the warrior, his brow knitting slightly as a horrible feeling descended over him. He had never found reason before to question Thor's right to take over the throne – after all, the alternative was hideously undesirable. Yet Rory's words had planted a seed of doubt in his mind: maybe his faith in Thor's ability to rule was merely a tacit assumption – possibly even a foolish one.

"What happened to their kingdoms?" he asked tentatively, his voice dulled as he looked back over at Rory.

Rory let out a humourless chuckle. "Anarchy. Destruction. They all fell, in the end."

It was exactly what Loki had both expected and dreaded to hear.

But surely Midgard was different? Asgard had different structures, different lifespans, a different culture…

Or was all of Creation the same? Did it really matter if it happened on Midgard or on Asgard? After all, a bad king was a bad king no matter which Realm he ruled over, and why should he think that things would be any different here than they were there?

The thought stayed with him even as the topic of conversation changed, even though the hours passed and the TARDIS healed and the Doctor declared that the three of them could depart.

As he watched the blue box disappear with that strange sound, only one thought was present in his mind:

Thor wasn't fit to rule.

He had to stop the coronation.


End file.
